In May 1945 with the war in Europe at an end, Britain had to play her part in the occupation of the defeated Germany. The near-bankrupt country was hard-pressed to maintain such a military presence on the continent and still manage our other out commitments across the Mediterranean, Middle and Far East. As the immediate post-war years came to pass, Britain and other western powers found themselves reviewing their relationship with the key victor in the east: the USSR. A defining moment came in 1948 when the Soviet Union attempted to starve the people of West Berlin to the point of being relinquished to their fate by the Western allies. Following a sterling and stubborn effort to keep the city supplied with the minimum materials and food the Soviet exercise ended in 1949. But the parameters were now set, the Iron Curtain had descended across the continent, and the RAF were to maintain a constant vigil with nuclear-armed aircraft on station ready to respond to Soviet aggression for the next four decades while politicians tried desperately to preserve the peace.

British Imperial Air Power examines the air defense of Australia and New Zealand during the interwar period. It also demonstrates the difficulty of applying new military aviation technology to the defense of the global Empire and provides insight into the nature of the political relationship between the Pacific Dominions and Britain. Following World War I, both Dominions sought greater independence in defense and foreign policy. Public aversion to military matters and the economic dislocation resulting from the war and later the Depression left little money that could be provided for their respective air forces. As a result, the Empire's air services spent the entire interwar period attempting to create a strategy in the face of these handicaps. In order to survive, the British Empire's military air forces offered themselves as a practical and economical third option in the defense of Britain's global Empire, intending to replace the Royal Navy and British Army as the traditional pillars of imperial defense.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A masterly history of the Dambusters raid from bestselling and critically acclaimed Max Hastings. Operation Chastise, the overnight destruction of the Moehne and Eder dams in north-west Germany by the RAF's 617 Squadron, was an epic that has passed into Britain's national legend. Max Hastings grew up embracing the story, the classic 1955 movie and the memory of Guy Gibson, the 24-year-old wing-commander who won the VC leading the raid. In the 21st Century, however, Hastings urges that we should review the Dambusters in much more complex shades. The aircrew's heroism was wholly authentic, as was the brilliance of Barnes Wallis, who invented the 'bouncing bombs'. But commanders who promised their young fliers that success could shorten the war fantasised wildly. What Germans call the Moehnekatastrophe imposed on the Nazi war machine temporary disruption, rather than a crippling blow. Hastings vividly describes the evolution of Wallis' bomb, and of the squadron which broke the dams at the cost of devastating losses. But he also portrays in harrowing detail those swept away by the torrents. Some 1,400 civilians perished in the biblical floods that swept through the Moehne valley, more than half of them Russian and Polish women, slave labourers under Hitler. Ironically, Air Marshal Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris gained much of the credit, though he opposed Chastise as a distraction from his city-burning blitz. He also made what the author describes as the operation's biggest mistake - the failure to launch a conventional attack on the Nazis' huge post-raid repair operation, which could have transformed the impact of the dam breaches upon Ruhr industry. Chastise offers a fascinating retake on legend by a master of the art. Hastings sets the dams raid in the big picture of the bomber offensive and of the Second World War, with moving portraits of the young airmen, so many of whom died; of Barnes Wallis; the monstrous Harris; the tragic Guy Gibson, together with superb narrative of the action of one of the most extraordinary episodes in British history.

The British designed and built the Harrier, the most successful vertical take-off-and-landing aircraft ever made. Combining state-of-the-art fighter plane technology with a helicopter's ability to land vertically the Harrier has played an indispensable role for the RAF and Royal Navy in a number of conflicts, most famously the Falklands War. Jonathan Glancey's biography is a vividly enjoyable account of the invention of this remarkable aeroplane and a fitting tribute to the inspiration and determination of the men and women who created it, and the bravery of the men who flew it, often in the most dangerous conditions.

If you were to ask about the symbolic aircraft of the desperate defence of Polish sky during the tragic September '39, without any doubt the answer should be one - the PZL P.11c. Although older machines (PZL P.7a and P.11a) fought next to it, the mentioned variant was a true backbone of the defence force. Pilots liked P.11c but in all publications it is described by an adjective "obsolete". It was the penultimate stage in the evolution of a long line of fighter planes, no longer having the disadvantages of the "infant period", but also actually constituting a closed alley in the evolution of this type of design. The PZL P.11g modification showed that the already mature construction can only be improved to a small extent. Being an export alternative, faster, equipped with a much more powerful engine and better armed PZL P.24 were actually the end of the possibilities of high wing strut aircraft. This was understood in Poland, where design offices were no longer involved in the further development of such structures (P.11g was just an emergency attempt to obtain not the most modern, but an efficient fighter). Unfortunately, it was not possible to produce or buy a successor abroad on time. That is why Poland entered the conflict equipped with fighter planes, once belonging to the world leaders, but giving way to the latest enemy machines.

When the Wright Brothers made their first flight in the early years of the twentieth century it sparked the imagination of those who wanted to fly, both in their country and around the world. In Britain, however, the spark wasnt strong enough to light a fire and it was in other parts of Europe, notably France, where flight began to develop seriously. Early pioneers of flight faced a high level of danger and many died in pursuit of fulfilling their dream. Although aircraft design had made incredible progress by the time of the outbreak of war, accidents still occurred on a regular basis. For some time, as many pilots died in accidents as they did in combat. This publication consolidates a range of stories, insights, and facts that, when combined, offer a vivid impression of events as they unfolded. The chaos stirred up during the First World War and the scramble to develop aircraft in response to the threat to homeland security is eloquently relayed, as are the battles that characterized this conflicted era. The reality of conflict gave aviation engineers and designers the opportunity to test their craft in the harshest of environments, pushing the benchmark ever higher in terms of what could be achieved. Sure to appeal to aviation enthusiasts and historians alike, this work offers the reader a full account of the developmental early days of flight.

"Fighters Over The Falklands" captures daily life using pictures taken during the author's tours of duty on the Islands. From the first detachments of Phantoms and Rapiers operating from a rapidly upgraded RAF Stanley airfield to life at RAF Mount Pleasant, see life from the author's perspective as the Commander of the Tornado F3 Flight defending the islands' airspace. Font-line fighter crews provided Quick Reaction Alert during day to day flying operations working with the Royal Navy, Army and other Air Force units to defend a remote, and sometimes forgotten, theatre of operations. It will also look at how the islanders interact with the forces based at Mount Pleasant and contrast high technology military operations with the lives of the original inhabitants; namely the wildlife.

The Vickers Wellington was one of very few aircraft types to have been in production and frontline service throughout World War II, and more than 10,000 Wellingtons were built in the period. They took part in the first RAF bombing mission of the conflict when, on 4 September 1939, 14 examples from Nos 9 and 149 Sqns undertook a daring daylight attack on the Kiel Canal. However, after suffering high losses on follow-up raids, Wellingtons were withdrawn from daytime missions and began to operate at night from May 1940. They subsequently took part in raids against the Italian port city of Genoa in July 1940, and against Berlin the following month, followed by key missions in the 'Battle of the Barges' in September and October, as the RAF targeted the Germany's invasion fleet being assembled in French Channel ports. When RAF's strike force expanded the next year following the introduction of the improved Wellington II, the 21 squadrons equipped with the Vickers aircraft, which included Polish-, Canadian- and Australian-manned units, formed the backbone of the Bomber Command night bombing force. Over the next two years Wellingtons participated in all the major operations by Bomber Command, including the daylight raid against German battleships in Brest harbour in July 1942 and the first three 'Thousand Bomber' raids in the summer of 1942. This illustrated study explores the design, development, and deployment of the Vickers-Wellington type, charting its role in World War II from its earliest missions to its use in training after its withdrawal from frontline bomber missions in 1943. The text is supported by stunning full-colour artwork.

The NASM's 60,000 objects comprise the world's largest collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft. The content is culled from the museum's two public display facilities, one on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and the second at the museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Among the 100 artifacts profiled are the original 1903 Wright Flyer; Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis; Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1; John Glenn's Friendship 7 spacecraft; the Apollo 11 command module; Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird; the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay; the Dash 80 prototype for the 707; the sole-surviving Boeing 307 Stratoliner; and space shuttle Discovery.

World War II saw the development of the heavy bomber as a decisive weapon which, in sufficient numbers, could overcome defensive fighters and guns and lay waste to strategic targets. The addition of nuclear weapons to the bomber's armament made it even more formidable, and by the late 1940s, US planners saw the growth of a Soviet nuclear-armed bomber fleet as a terrifying threat to North American security. Conventional subsonic fighters with guns and free-flight air-to-air rockets would be incapable of reaching these incoming bombers in time to prevent even one from delivering a devastating nuclear attack. As a result, supersonic speed, long-range guided missiles and precise radar-based control of an interception became prerequisites for a new breed of fighters, beginning with the F-102. A massive research and development effort produced the F-102A '1954 Fighter', the J57 afterburning turbojet, its Hughes MX-1554 fire control system and, in due course, the Semi-Active Ground Environment (SAGE) radar and communications network that covered North America to guide its airborne defences. In service, F-102As also provided air defence in Europe with USAFE, in the Far East and in Southeast Asia, where they protected US airbases in South Vietnam and Thailand from air attack by North Vietnamese fighters and bombers and escorted B-52s and fighter-bombers on their attack sorties. This illustrated study from leading expert Peter E. Davis details the design, development, and deployment of the futuristic F-102, including its complex research program and role in Vietnam.

A major revision of our understanding of long-range bombing, this book examines how Anglo-American ideas about "strategic" bombing were formed and implemented. It argues that ideas about bombing civilian targets rested on--and gained validity from--widespread but substantially erroneous assumptions about the nature of modern industrial societies and their vulnerability to aerial bombardment. These assumptions were derived from the social and political context of the day and were maintained largely through cognitive error and bias. Tami Davis Biddle explains how air theorists, and those influenced by them, came to believe that strategic bombing would be an especially effective coercive tool and how they responded when their assumptions were challenged.

Biddle analyzes how a particular interpretation of the World War I experience, together with airmen's organizational interests, shaped interwar debates about strategic bombing and preserved conceptions of its potentially revolutionary character. This flawed interpretation as well as a failure to anticipate implementation problems were revealed as World War II commenced. By then, the British and Americans had invested heavily in strategic bombing. They saw little choice but to try to solve the problems in real time and make long-range bombing as effective as possible.

Combining narrative with analysis, this book presents the first-ever comparative history of British and American strategic bombing from its origins through 1945. In examining the ideas and rhetoric on which strategic bombing depended, it offers critical insights into the validity and robustness of those ideas--not only as they applied to World War II but as they apply to contemporary warfare.

In this inspiring account of the Tuskegee Airmen-the country's first African American military pilots-historian J. Todd Moye captures the challenges and triumphs of these brave aviators in their own words, drawing on more than 800 interviews recorded for the National Park Service's Tuskegee Airmen Oral History Project. Denied the right to fully participate in the U.S. war effort alongside whites at the beginning of World War II, African Americans-spurred on by black newspapers and civil rights organizations such as the NAACP-compelled the prestigious Army Air Corps to open its training programs to black pilots, despite the objections of its top generals. Thousands of young men came from every part of the country to Tuskegee, Alabama, in the heart of the segregated South, to enter the program, which expanded in 1943 to train multi-engine bomber pilots in addition to fighter pilots. By the end of the war, Tuskegee Airfield had become a small city populated by black mechanics, parachute packers, doctors, and nurses. Together, they helped prove that racial segregation of the fighting forces was so inefficient as to be counterproductive to the nation's defense. Freedom Flyers brings to life the legacy of a determined, visionary cadre of African American airmen who proved their capabilities and patriotism beyond question, transformed the armed forces-formerly the nation's most racially polarized institution-and jump-started the modern struggle for racial equality. "The personal nature of the examples Moye cites make it a far deeper and richer narrative than typical WWII fare.... The author's friendly style should open the title up to even casual readers." -Booklist "An excellent history of the first African-American military pilots.... Moye's lively prose and the intimate details of the personal narratives yield an accessible scholarly history that also succeeds as vivid social history." -Publishers Weekly

GROUP CAPTAIN JOHNNY KENT joined the RAF in the 1930s and went on to become a flight commander of one of the most successful fighter squadrons of the Second World War. In this role, he helped the famous 303 Polish Squadron play a decisive part in the Battle of Britain, which earned him the highest Polish military award, the Virtuti Militari, as well as the affectionate nickname 'Kentowski'. Group Captain Kent's fascinating memoirs, originally published in 1971, tell the story of his life in the RAF, from his struggles as a boy on the Canadian Prairies to get into the air, detailing his experiences as a test pilot in Farnborough and his constant efforts to excel at what he did. Alongside the classic tale of derring-do, Kent's daughter provides supplementary material that places his extraordinary story into the broader context of his life as a son, husband and father. Poignant questions are raised about what it meant to be 'One of the Few' - for both the men themselves and those to whom they were closest.

Have you ever wondered what it was like to fly the Phantom? This is not a potted history of an aeroplane, nor is it Hollywood glamour as captured in Top Gun. This is the story of life on the frontline during the Cold War told in the words of a navigator who flew the iconic jet. Unique pictures, many captured from the cockpit, show the Phantom in its true environment and show why for many years the Phantom was the envy of NATO. It also tells the inside story of some of the problems which plagued the Phantom in its early days, how the aircraft developed, or was neglected, and reveals events which shaped the aircraft's history and contributed to its demise. Anecdotes capture the deep affection felt by the crews who were fortunate enough to cross paths with the Phantom during their flying careers. The nicknames the aircraft earned were not complimentary and included the 'Rhino', 'The Spook', 'Double Ugly', the 'Flying Brick' and the 'Lead Sled'. Whichever way you looked at it, you could love or hate the Phantom, but you could never ignore it for its sheer power and lethal payload. The Phantom in Focus: A Navigator's Eye on Britain's Cold War Warrior is unique in that the author flew in the legendary Phantom in the front line and captured beautiful and amazing unpublished photographs that will appeal to historians, military specialists and modellers alike.

Germany was never able to match the power of the Allied air forces with their great four-engine bombers, the Lancasters, Liberators and Flying Fortresses. Indeed, many have ascribed the defeat of Germany in the Second World to its lack of a strategic bombing force. There were, though, two occasions when the Luftwaffe's twin-engine bombers undertook strategic objectives on a large scale. The first of these was the 'Blitz' of 1940-1941, in which the Luftwaffe attempted to wreck Britain's industrial and military capacity. The second was on the eve of Operation _Zitadelle_, a major offensive against Soviet forces in the Kursk salient Hitler's objective was to replicate the successful Allied mass-bombing of German cities, the Luftwaffe being tasked with destroying the main tank and aircraft production facilities and fuel depots. Hitler saw this as the necessary prelude to weaken the Russians before the 'decisive' onslaught of _Zitadelle_. The aerial operation, _Carmen II_, lasted for a month and covered a huge target area from the Rybinsk reservoir to the Caspian Sea. For these complex and risky night missions, all the Ju-88 and ??-111 bombers available to Hitler in the East were employed.. The authors have collected a huge amount of factual material, reconstructing all the details of this little-known campaign, which was the largest operation Luftwaffe on the Eastern front. This book opens a completely new page in the history of the German air war and provides a comprehensive investigation into the nature of the targets attacked, the degree of damage suffered by the Soviet military machine, and how this affected Operation _Zitadelle_. The descriptions of the dangerous missions carried out by Luftwaffe as part of this operation are presented in great detail and all these exclusive facts are complemented by a large number of unique photos and documents.

The Albatross was the premier fixed-wing rescue aircraft for the U.S. Air Force and Coast Guard. Its very colorful history begins in 1946 and spans nearly a quarter of a century, including service with twenty-two foreign nations. With a total of 466 built by Grumman, more than eighty examples still thrive on the civil register. The Albatross also saw extensive service in the Korean and Vietnam wars. The fascinating history of this unique aircraft is complemented by over 200 photographs including many in color showing the great variations in color schemes and markings.

Each pilot and bombardier/navigator sat side by side in an all-weather jet built for low-level bombing runs, precision targeting, and night strikes. Their success--and their very lives--depended on teamwork in flying their versatile A-6 Intruders. And when the North Vietnamese mounted a major offensive in 1972, they answered the call.

Carol Reardon chronicles the operations of Attack Squadron 75, the "Sunday Punchers," and their high-risk bombing runs launched off the U.S.S. Saratoga during the famous LINEBACKER campaigns. Based on unparalleled access to crew members and their families, her book blends military and social history to offer a unique look at the air war in Southeast Asia, as well as a moving testament to the close-knit world of naval aviators.

Theirs was one of the toughest jobs in the military: launching off the carrier in rough seas as well as calm, flying solo and in formation, dodging dense flak and surface-to-air missiles, delivering ordnance on target, and recovering aboard safely. Celebrating the men who climbed into the cockpits as well as those who kept them flying, Reardon takes readers inside the squadron's ready room and onto the flight decks to await the call, "Launch the Intruders " Readers share the adrenaline-pumping excitement of each mission--as well as those heart-stopping moments when a downed aircraft brought home to all, in flight and on board, that every aspect of their lives was constantly shadowed by danger and potential death.

More than a mere combat narrative, Launch the Intruders interweaves human drama with familial concerns, domestic politics, and international diplomacy. Fliers share personal feelings about killing strangers from a distance while navy wives tell what it's like to feel like a stranger at home. And as the war rages on, headlines like Jane Fonda's visit to Hanoi and the Paris Peace Accords are all viewed through the lens of this heavily tasked, hard-hitting attack squadron.

A rousing tale of men and machines, of stoic determination in the face of daunting odds, Reardon's tale shines a much-deserved light on group of men whose daring exploits richly deserve to be much better known.

WRECK RECOVERY IN BRITAIN THEN AND NOW By Peter J. Moran The last 50 years have seen an incredible interest in the excavation of crashed aircraft. Schoolboys of the war period eagerly sought and swapped souvenirs, purloined from crashes under the eyes of the police or RAF guards but, after the surface wreckage was cleared away by Maintenance Units, no one realised that even greater treasures remained underground.   Whereas on the Continent the Missing Research and Enquiry Unit left no stone unturned to try to trace the thousands of airmen who still remained missing, strangely enough no similar operation was carried out by the RAF on crash sites in the United Kingdom. Many of these still contained the mortal remains of pilots whose names had been added to the Memorial to the Missing unveiled at Runnymede in 1953. Perhaps, because the war in the air that followed the Battle of Britain had shifted its focus to Europe, it appeared to fade from people’s memory that a hard-fought battle had taken place over the United Kingdom in 1940.   It is difficult to understand today how it took so long for the realisation to sink in that aircraft wreckage still remained buried. When it did, there followed what can only be described as an unholy scramble to find crash sites and dig them up, heavy plant being employed to make it easier and quicker. At the height of this unfettered exploration period during the 1970s, there were over 30 `aviation archaeology’ groups, or loose affiliations of like-minded individuals at work, particularly in the counties of Essex, Kent and Sussex over which the main battle had been fought. Unrecovered human remains were now being found which understandably raised criticism from some quarters but was defended by the argument that missing airmen should have been recovered by the authorities in former years. Inevitably order had to be restored and the Ministry of Defence stepped in with a `code of conduct’ for digging up crashed aircraft, a measure that was reinforced by an Act of Parliament in 1986. Thereafter a process was introduced whereby the Ministry issued licences before a wreck site could be excavated, and every licence application, whether granted or refused, is listed for the first time in this book. In the end, after all the accessible locations had been exhausted, the exploration of wartime crash sites in Britain largely came to a close. Size: 12” × 8½" - 232 Pages – Over 600 Colour and Black and White Illustrations ISBN: 9 781870 067 942 — Price: £29.95

Junkers Ju 188 - German bomber during World War II, successor of the Ju 88) was flown in January 1943. In February 1943, production lines launched three Ju 188E-0 planes powered by BMW 801ML engines. The first seven serial Ju 188E-1s received the BMW 801C-2 engines. Airplanes powered by Junkers Jumo in-line engines were to be marked A, B, C and D, while those powered by BMW, F, G and H radial engines. The identification variant of the E-1 version was the Ju 188F-1, equipped with two cameras.

In this intrepid study, noted Nigerian historian Onianwa Oluchukwu Ignatus investigates the air war component of the Nigerian-Biafran War, a crucial postcolonial conflict in Africa. It focuses on the Biafra's air operations against oil installations and facilities owned by multinational oil companies in Nigeria. In addition to exploring global airpower historiography, this study explores the tactical aspects of how the renewed air war changed the military equation of the conflict when both sides were at loggerheads in peace settlement and relief arrangements. This episode was important in postcolonial military history of Africa, when modern air weapons were developed at the local level for offensive military capability. While the air operations of the Biafrans were sporadic yet destructive, they caused considerable damage to public utilities in Nigeria. Internally, the air attacks paved the way for internal disturbances in the oil producing areas by damaging oil companies' activities and the reducing foreign investment. Externally, it caused a loss of confidence in Nigeria. The Biafran air offensive proved to be the key strategy in Nigeria's response to the crisis, which focused on neutralizing Biafran airpower.